Book Rec: And our faces, my heart, brief as photos

February 26th, 2026

“In Caravaggio’s art, as one might expect, there is no property. A few tools and recipients, chairs and a table.”

Greetings from the squally wilds,

Hope you’re surviving this brainless spiral of a nation and year.

Figured between the longer essays I’d deliver some compressed morsels to sate The Feed.

Because I read lots of stuff my friends and family might like but normally wouldn't discover, thought I’d offer some book recs.

These will be quick descriptions of the titles I’m enjoying in near real time. That’s about it.

So, the first selection…

…is John Berger’s 1984 lyrical collection of essays and poetry, And our faces, my heart, brief as photos.

I noticed the NYRB was reissuing the book, along with Berger’s novel G. But those printings weren’t coming out until June, so I ordered a copy on Thriftbooks for less than two dollars.¹ Turned out to be a US first edition, but badly gnawed by a dog. Really it was just a pile of torn paper. After a few adhesives, it could be carried in a bag.

The chewed volume.

Worth it, obviously. You know I love Berger. Apparently, at the time of its release, audiences had trouble “categorizing” the book. And it is indeed a heady pot of intimate prose, poetry, art criticism, and political essays. Nowadays, people describe this style as “fragmentary,” referring to our postmodern habit of gleaning narrative from incomplete info. But this collection is remarkably complete, coming together as an apotropaic charm against capital’s aesthetic acid. In search of a point of view to quell modern alienation, Berger hitchhikes through his usual haunts: paintings, poems, lenses, stories.

If you dig that kind of thing, you’ll find a trove of tearful passages. I’ll only poison one with quotation. It’s an unassuming, not especially pithy snippet, unlikely to be cited elsewhere. But it caught my eye, probably because I share my life, including this snowy winter, with a textile artist:

“Of this present world that they know so well, they did not expect better. They know that there has never been a winter in Anatolia without snow, a summer without animals dying from drought, a workers’ movement without repression. Utopias exist only in carpets.”

The book is, in the end, a little hard to categorize. Just check it out. If you don’t like it, don’t tell me.

Peace until next time,

Nick

1. An exclamatory sidebar warns me only one copy is left for sale. Let me know if you want to borrow mine.